Sony’s “Transfer Jet” vs. the international WiMedia UWB standard
During CES in Las Vegas this past week, Sony demonstrated their own proprietary form of UWB they called “Transfer Jet”. It is a very low power version of UWB operating at 1000 times less power than standard UWB signals – which are already 100 times less than WiFi or Bluetooth. The frequency spectrum they used is at 4.5 GHz, plus or minus about 260 MHz. The range of the link was very short – about 1 inch. Yes that is right, about one inch. Essentially Transfer Jet is meant for an almost direct contact between a portable device, such as a digital camera, and a PC or an HDTV, or perhaps between two portable devices. Sony’s point in their presentation was that for many consumers, the natural thing to do with a portable device is to bring it very close to the device they wish to connect to. Intuitively, I can see this. Sony further envisions this technology being used in as a form of communications for point-of-sale transactions. For example, think about a case where you’d touch your cell phone to a photo kiosk. You’d electronically pay for prints through your cell phone and transfer the pictures at the same time. This would occur at high speed so as not to waste your time or test your patience. The speed of Sony’s technology was stated to be just over 500 Mbps. In other words, about 10% faster than the international standard version of UWB called WiMedia (the basis of Certified Wireless USB).
To me, the peculiar thing about Sony’s demonstration of a proprietary UWB solution is that it doesn’t appear to provide any value over simply using industry standard WiMedia UWB, an industry group of which Sony is a member. In particular, if Sony were to use an Alereon UWB chipset transferring at 480 Mbps and operate it at 1000 times less power than standard FCC transmit power levels – the same as Transfer Jet – the range for our industry standard solution would be about 2 to 4 inches. Moreover, when operated at normal power levels, the distances could be much longer. Since Alereon’s chipset distance can be controlled by software, it would have been far easier for Sony to simply give Alereon a call and then write some software, than spend three years developing a new chipset akin to being a Memory Stick. Moreover, Sony’s Transfer Jet technology was cited as having been developed to avoid various international regulatory issues facing UWB technology outside of Japan. However, Transfer Jet only works in the 4.5 GHz band, which would make it an illegal in China when used with portable devices and would likely also be illegal in Europe after 2010. In contrast, Alereon’s UWB chipset, based upon the accepted ISO international UWB standard, is software programmable to work in Japan, the US, Europe, Korea and China due to its ability to support all UWB frequency bands from 3.1 GHz up to 10.6 GHz.
I admire Sony research for the brilliant work they have done in OLED technology, in Blu-Ray and in many other areas of consumer electronics. I also like their use of Transfer Jet UWB for close contact connectivity — it is an intuitive usage model for portable electronics. However time has shown that proprietary standards, such as Sony’s Memory Stick or iLink, don’t become industry standards just because they come from Sony. Proprietary standards become industry standards only when they offer highly compelling advantages over other alternative technologies, such as Sony’s Blu-Ray does over HD-DVD. Since Sony announced their intention to ship products with Transfer Jet in time for the holiday season in 2009, they still have time to make Transfer Jet a valuable piece of software, using the international standard form of UWB based upon an Alereon chipset (or a chipset from one of our competitors).The advantage to Sony would not only be that the technology would work at high speeds and close contact, but it could also be used at farther distances and for connectivity to the entire world of UWB devices that are in development (as well as PCs that have already begun shipping UWB technology). Only time will tell if Transfer Jet is the next Memory Stick, BetaMax, or the UWB version of Blu-Ray. In any case, Transfer Jet clearly demonstrates that Sony believes UWB technology should be the portable electronics basis of a future Life Without Wires™.
